Notes from The Data Warehouse Toolkit: Fact Tables & Dimension Tables
1. What is a Fact Table? A fact table contains business facts & foreign keys which refer to candidate keys in the dimension table.
2. What is a Dimension Table? Think of them as the 5 points in a star schema or the boundaries/entry points to the fact table. Ā A dimension table is one of the set of companion tables to a fact table. Ā They may represent the hierarchical relationships in the business. Ā Each dimension is defined with a single primary key.
3. What is an attribute? TheĀ āBYā words. Ā So if business needs to know scores by student by grade, that means we have 2 attributes: student and grade. Ā Attributes are the primary source of query constraints, groupings and repost labels.Ā
4. Where lies the power of the DW? The power of a DW lies in the quality and depth of the dimension tables.
5. What makes the DW better in terms of this specific quality? The more time spent populating values, ensuring the quality of the values, & providing attributes with verbose business technology the better the DW is.
6. What creates robust slicing and dicing capabilities? Robust dimension attributes.